Short Poems

THE ring, so worn as you behold,
So thin, so pale, is yet of gold:
The passion such it was to prove--
Worn with life's care, love yet was love.

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

A man, infirm
With age, slowly sucks
A fish bone.

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

A man is not the slave of circumstance,
Or need not be, but builder and dictator;
He makes his own events, not time nor chance;
Their logic his: not creature, but creator.

Up from the oven pit,
The hell where poor men toil,
At the sunset hour he comes
Clean-clothed, washed from soil.
On the fo'c's'le head he kneels,
His face to the hallowed West.
He prays, and bows and prays.
Does he pray for death and rest?

Cache-les dans ton coeur, toi dont le coeur pardonne,
Ces bouquets imprudents qui fleurissaient en moi ;
C'est toute une âme en fleur qui s'exhale vers toi ;
Aux autres, je l'entr'ouvre : à toi, je te la donne.

You and me
me and you
flower-bee
grass and dew.

How can my love hold him when the other
Flaunts a gaudy lust and is lioness
To his beast? Men are worthless, to trap them
Use the cheapest bait of all, but never
Love, which in a woman must mean tears
And a silence in the blood.